L'Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France (review)

Several cities surrounding Paris, working class municipalities of the "red belt", sport streets named after Cristino García, a Spanish loyalist and officer in the French Resistance. He was not killed in combat for the liberation of France, however, but rather was executed by the Franco regime in 1946. The fact that the García case made such an impact on French public opinion is an indication of the close postwar connection between Spanish Republicans, their movement, and early postwar French society.

David A. Messenger, assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming, has published a stimulating work which describes this complex relationship between French policy and Spanish Republicanism between 1944 and 1948. This period was a turning point for both countries, a time when France moved from reconstruction to renewal, all the while striving to make its political mark in liberated Europe and balancing the concepts of "justice" and "realpolitik" in foreign affairs.

This relatively short, but precise, work is structured in six chapters and narrates France's changing relationship towards authoritarian Spain and the multiple domestic and international factors that influenced its positions. The author has convincingly chosen a chronological structure; the first three chapters discuss the fluid situation and the major factors which influenced French policy from 1942 to 1947 while the remaining three chapters continue to study specific initiatives on Spain undertaken by France both on an individual basis and within the framework of the United Nations up to 1948. The author includes an impressive bibliography and supports his claims with exhaustive research in American, British, Spanish and French archives.

What emerges from Messenger's study is the difficult situation in which France found itself in relation to its southern neighbor. On the one hand, wartime and economic policy were determining factors, but these were later supplanted by a postwar desire to renovate French democracy and diplomacy with regard to the "resistance" experience and instill some sense of morality. Nevertheless, France also needed to conjugate this new policy with that of its allies, Great Britain and the United States, countries which did not systematically share France's views on Spain and the Franco regime. Messenger convincingly illustrates that there was little room for manoeuvre. Free France attempted to walk a fine line, at different times, between wartime goals of freeing refugees wishing to join French forces in Northern Africa and maintaining valuable trade with Spain. After liberation, France responded to postwar popular demands to support Spanish Republicanism, but at the same time integrated the postwar policies of its allies. Despite public opinion and true sympathies for republicanism, France struggled so as not to allow the question of the Franco regime to isolate it from the international policies of Western Europe.

Professor Messenger's present work began as his doctoral dissertation and, as such, may not be the final word on the matter. This enlightening view into a complex period of European history and France's international relations both during the war and in the difficult aftermath is a first step. Several subjects which are only briefly touched upon call for further study. These include the wartime economic ties between France and Spain, the dependence on imports from Spain in the reconstruction of France and also the profound sympathies in French society and public opinion towards the Spanish Loyalists which began during the civil war and continued through liberation and the postwar period. One can only hope that the considerable scholarship contained in the volume and the many avenues of study it suggests bode well for further research on the subject.